Trying to explain what I know about fishkeeping to someone who wants to start a community tank... Would help if I could get a word in! It's frustrating when the person clearly doesn't have enough knowledge to maintain a tank, but won't listen, especially when I only have limited knowledge and still have plenty to say... *headdesk* Perhaps I'll just compile and print a bunch of information for them to read instead of talking to a brick wall.

Phew, today was fairly hellish. My grandmother and my father don't get along, never have, and today was no exception.

There was a silver lining to all the quarrels and unease though: buying three pieces of driftwood, one for each of my boys, and getting a tank for Weehawk to match Feyd's and Falkor's. Come next water change, everyone will have uniform tanks, with the only differences being the contents! I do like having a uniform appearance when I have more than one of an item, and tanks are no exception, it just feels wrong having an odd one out.

A bonus to this OCD-type compulsion to match tanks is that if I ever require one for QT and a hospital tank at the same time, there'll be no issue as I now have two spares! Yayyyy!

At the moment, I'm eyeing off some shrimp and plants online... But I can't have them until I complete my current mission of making the trip to Aqueus to fetch some water sprite and live brine shrimp. Must keep priorities in order.

Wheeee, another Wednesday, another 50% water change for everybody... I bought a piece of driftwood for each of the boys' tanks to give them a little something more. It's been soaking for quite a few days now, and the water hasn't been tinted with tannins anymore for the last day, so I'm putting them in.

My goal is to eventually do a complete re-model of everyone's tanks, with loads of plants, moss and driftwood and perhaps some shrimp if the boys don't eat them, now they've got big enough homes to house them. I know it's a bit of a gamble, but it'd be lovely if they played nice together.

But yeah, the big goal in my mind when it comes to my fish, now that they're all safe, healthy and in good-sized tanks, and Falkor's tail is healing more and more every day, is to get some lovely plants and make their homes all pretty. Because I wouldn't want to spend all my time in an ugly room without being able to rearrange it. Of course, it also means pretty things for me to look at while I'm gaming as well, but y'know...

So yahh. Just really glad everyone seems happy and healthy, the two new boys are settled in, and the tail-biter's letting himself heal up. Woohoo!

Hmph. Well, no more Miss Nice Fish-Mum. After posting a question about it here, I've been trying to find some nice, non-shiny patterned paper for Falkor's tank background, because he hated his fairly muted foliage background that came with the new tank.

I finally bought a calendar featuring some lovely photographs from around the world, and chose a pretty spectacular waterfall scene for him. There are small patches of black and dark colours, but it's by no means solid. He still hates it. I tried it upside-down, so there are almost no dark colours visible (the plants hide it when it's upside down). No change in behaviour.

I'm sorry Falkor, but you've been such a sook about this background business, and I've spent a fair bit of money trying to give you one you'd actually like, and I'm done. You will get used to this one. You can flare for the rest of the day if you want to, but for once I'm not gonna back down to your temper tantrum. I need a background on your tank, because storing the stuff that helps me take care of you is unsightly without a background to hide it. You really are going to just have to get over the fact that you have a background.

Now to try and see if Feyd chucks a hissy fit over his background too... So sick of looking at power cords right behind his lovely tank!

Okay, so I ended up caving and changing Falkor's background to a snowy scene with a castle. Pretty much no dark colours, anywhere, except the outlines of things but there's absolutely no way he could be flaring at himself. There's trees, a mountain, basically there's no solid patches of anything, except for a small area of sky, which is a light blue. No white, no black. He's still flaring. That's it, I give up! At least he's flaring less with this one. He's really going to have to get over it this time.

I'm currently watching/listening to my boyfriend play League of Legends with a mate of ours. The reason I'm not playing too is because this friend is so bad that I just can't handle having to play a match with him on our team. It sounds terrible, and I do like him because he's our mate and a decent guy, but he's just not a team player, which loses us matches.

Anyway, I'm itching to buy more stuff for my boys' tanks. Now I really know what people mean about getting "the bug". Not only does it mean you constantly wish you had more room/time for more tanks, but also constantly wanting to improve the tanks you do have. I've done two tank upgrades in the last month, not to mention the setup of the surprise boys we got for Christmas, and I still desperately want to get more live plants and more driftwood to create a really interesting environment for the boys and perhaps some shrimp, provided they play nice together.

The boyfriend's mum is already talking about getting us more fish, to which my partner was all like, "Ohhh no you don't! While we'd absolutely love more, we just can't afford new tanks, don't have enough space for any more, and certainly don't have the time or money for the setup and upkeep of them!" She wants to get girls for us. It makes me want to start a sorority, but I know that my back just couldn't handle the large/frequent water changes required during cycling on top of taking care of the boys I've already got. Not to mention the fact that there's nowhere I could put a tank large enough for that, unless I got rid of stuff my grandma really doesn't want me to. There's only so much one can do with three people and three fish already living in a small two-bedroom apartment filled with clutter!

That said, if I ever do get the chance to throw out all the stuff that's unnecessary in here, I'd definitely get more fish, upgrade the tanks I've already got, put in the hard yards for cycling them all and have a pretty rewarding life to come home to when I finally get started in my career. ^.^ I can think of nothing better for the conclusion of a five-year-plan than having a career in body modification established, coming home after each day's work to my boyfriend (who may be more by that point, who knows? can't plan that stuff though) and many beautiful fish and chilling out, spending time with everyone... Happy times.

Which brings me to something else a lot of people think is odd. I really enjoy water change time. I think I've touched on that in earlier posts... I enjoy WCs, rearranging the tanks, feeding my boys... Just everything about having these wonderful creatures I thoroughly enjoy. It's awesome!

So I'm basically counting down the days until after the Red Dwarf and Star Trek conventions, and the Kiss/Motley Crue concert and the Offspring show, because after all that's done, and my piercing course saved up for, I can start really making these tanks beautiful. YAYY!!

So I ended up caving to Falkor's demands to remove the tank background, but not before taking an idea from someone on this forum and purchasing some patterned fabric to use as backgrounds. There are three pieces of quilting fabric on the way, along with velcro dots to affix them to the back of the tank. Each piece is different both in colour and pattern, so hopefully he'll approve of at least one of them. If these ones fail too, I have my eye on some lovely damask fabrics on eBay. I might end up buying those too, but we'll start cheaply and work our way up, haha.

Every time I look at the boys' tanks, I'm itching more and more to order driftwood, plants and shrimp. It's driving me nuts! I just hope that once I get the tanks "perfect" that I won't come up with a new idea of what "perfection" would be for tanks such as mine!

One dilemma in planning these new tank setups in the making is that the current hidey-holes will definitely not match. We'll be going for a super-natural look, with loads of moss and plants attached to driftwood, hopefully with some goldvine accents just snaking in and out of the hardscape and plants. The idea is to have a really beautiful design that will work in low-light, low-tech conditions, provide cover for the shrimp we plan to introduce into the tanks, and also have plenty of ammonia absorption and oxygenation with the plants, reducing the demand for water changes and also creating a decent environment for the shimp.

Obviously we're still in planning stages and I do plan to put a question to the forum about whether this idea would actually work, or if we'd simply be better off sticking to just plants and our bettas. Perhaps I've just got too excited with the upgrade to 3.9 gallons for everybody, and shrimp aren't such a good idea, considering I do not want to filter the tanks, mostly for financial and energy consumption reasons (which I guess ties into financial, heh).

Woohoo! Just got a text from the site I ordered some plants from informing me they've finally been shipped! I had a feeling it'd take a while with the Christmas holiday backlog, so I'm glad they're finally on their way. Two potted crypts and two potted anubias will be joining my boys in their tanks in a couple of days, happy times. It was all I could afford after the huge spending spree that came with two surprise fish, but bigger and better things are on the horizon which is super-exciting.

Something that's been bothering me a little is that Weehawk tends to stick to one corner of his tank. Occasionally he'll explore everything, but he seems to have found a favourite spot and won't budge from there unless I coax him towards the front of the tank. I'm fairly sure he's not scared of anything so I'm not too worried, and he's an active little guy so that's fine too. I just wish he'd have chosen a favourite spot on the side I can view him on from my bed, haha.

Falkor is the same cuteypie derpy thing as usual. His tail's growing back nicely and no signs of him chasing it again, so fingers crossed! Parts of it are already grown back to their original length, though they're still clear so I'm hoping that's a good sign. He seems to be super happy with the piece of driftwood I got him for his tank, swimming under and over it, and occasionally just resting on top of it. Actually, since getting that for him, he's barely taken notice of his hidey-hole pot! I wonder if that thing will become kinda obsolete for him, and if it does, if there's any way I can remove the anubias from it to attach to driftwood when we do the tank overhaul... Hmm. Perhaps yet another question to pose to the forum when the time comes...

So my order of plants arrived today, which would have been a "yayyy!" moment if it weren't for two out of four terracotta pots being broken. Not broken as in cracked, I mean completely shattered. Thankfully I had ordered two anubias and two crypts, so I could simply move an anubias out of one pot and attach it to driftwod, remove my other anubias from the pot it was tied to (my mini baby one, not the one already rooted onto a hidey-hole) and the crypts had something to be planted in, so all is well. What's not well is that I did not get what I paid for, which was four potted plants, intact. If I'd wanted bare-root plants, I'd have got them, and for much cheaper.

The silver lining in all this is that Falkor was so flippin' adorable when I put his driftwood back in his tank, with added plant. He looked like he wanted to say, "Is this my driftwood? The one I like to swim over, under and rest on? Hang on, I'll just test the tunnel function. Okay, it's definitely my piece. I approve, carry on human minion."

Sometimes I wonder if that little dude is a cat trapped in a fish's body. He certainly behaves that way! It's so cute.

If we take the kitty analogy and apply it to all my fish, Weehawk is definitely the little kitten, overly curious and wanting to play with everything and everybody. Feyd would be an old man cat, just lording over everything and supervising.

Haha, my boyfriend plays League of Legends too, obsessively. I play with him sometimes but he gets moody when he loses and I am absolutely horrible at that game (or any game, really, lol).

Do you think it'd be easier to just buy some terracotta pots and put the plants in them? I want to get live plants as well for my sorority tank... I was at Michael's the other day and saw a whole bunch of different sized terracotta pots for less than a dollar.